Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The Mountain Bird

In 1859 Henrik Ibsen wrote an opera libretto – more
precisely, the beginning of an opera libretto. He never finished it. It’s
titled The Mountain Bird (in
Norwegian, Fjeldfuglen), and it was
produced for the first time in 2009 by a Norwegian company, Grusomhetens
Teater, with contemporary music by Filip Sande.

The company presented the production at La MaMa
recently, in Norwegian with English surtitles. What a brilliant production! The
work is based on Artaud and Grotowski, with minimalist set and elegant,
stylized acting. Its actors are masters of expressive and repeated gesture.

There are eight actors in this opera, and only two musicians.
The musicians play traditional Scandinavian instruments: the fiddle, the
langeleik (which is like a zither or dulcimer), a drum, the glockenspiel and
the flute. It’s a great delight to hear singers singing with next to no
instrumentation, and there are choral pieces sung a capella.

Ibsen’s libretto is strictly in the vein of 19th-cventury
romanticism:
The song that echoes
In rushing waters
The tune that rustles
Through mountain birches

There’s more to Ibsen, we see, than the social
realism he’s famous for. The Mountain
Bird and his verse works were written before the prose dramas. This piece
of writing may be only of interest to Ibsen scholars, but Grusomhetens Teater
has made it 90 minutes of excellent theater.

The story is based on a medieval myth. A young girl
survives the plague while everyone else in her village succumbs to it.
Isolated, she becomes a child of nature, feral. Into the valley comes a party
from a neighboring village. She meets one of the men and of course they fall in
love immediately.

The conflict is that our man is betrothed, and the
marriage is imminent. In fact, his bride-to-be, who is in the exploration
party, is already wearing her golden bridal crown. When the members of the party
find that their man has fallen for the young woman, they insist that he return
home with them, but, inexplicably, invite the young woman to join them. And so
she does.

Act Two takes place in the village of the party.
It’s quite brief. The scene is a wedding celebration, and ends with the bride
and groom on a sleigh, on their way to the church. At this point, the
manuscript breaks off.

The production is directed by Lars Øyno, very meticulously, very eloquently. Sometimes is
actors move so slowly that the stage is almost a tableau vivant. “Elfin
folk gladly will a-dancing go,” Ibsen tells us, and there are three graceful
dancers on stage.

The woman from the mountains never appears in
Ibsen’s second act, but Mr. Øyno
has added a song at the very end of the show from another source.
Unfortunately, he’s failed to give us translation for guidance.

Filip Sande’s music, in a contemporary voice, is
marvelous, by turns commanding, urgent and delicate. Sande wrote it for an
orchestra, but it sounds marvelous adapted for these few traditional
instruments. One of the musicians plays the fiddle during the love duet,
standing next to the couple as if bewitching them.

The costumes are based on traditional designs as
well. They’re lovely, although not particularly colorful. The set consists of a
single, small, bare tree. The splotched backdrop suggests a landscape.

The production, then, has combination of aesthetics:
19th-century poetry, contemporary music, and traditional instruments
and design. The result is a mesmerizing timelessness.